IT Runs on Java 8 • Hacker News Board

Re: IT Runs on Java 8

#331

Post by bunderbunder » Fri, May 10, 2019, 11:30 PM UTC

pron wrote: post #280

kllrnohj wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Technically there is nothing I don't like about JVM right now, everything that seems impossible 15 years ago is now solved. Value types are a major missing piece in the JVM stack right now. It's at least on the roadmap, but it keeps getting pushed back and back and back. I'd also argue runtime generics is another one, and perhaps more depressingly one that is unlikely to ever get fixed. .NET has both of them and al…

> .NET has both of them I'll give you value types, but reified generics in .NET were a mistake. It really makes interop and code sharing among languages hard, in exchange for a rather slight added convenience. This means that if you're a language implementor and you're targeting .NET, you'll get much less from the platform than you would if you target Java, which makes .NET not a very appealing common language runtim…

I see it as a double-edged sword.

On the one hand, reified generics means that it's .NET's object model or the highway.

On the other hand, .NET maintains a much higher standard of inter-language interoperability. When I was on .NET, I didn't have to worry much about the folks working in F# accidentally rendering their module unusable from C#. Now that I'm on the JVM, I've accepted that it's just a given that the dependency arrows between the Java and Scala modules should only ever point in one direction.

Re: IT Runs on Java 8

#332

Post by btilly » Fri, May 10, 2019, 11:31 PM UTC

pron wrote: post #309

btilly wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By "lurking" people mean that the executives who care nothing about open source are firmly in control, and some day may try to assert their control in ways that nobody else likes. You may not remember incidents like why Jenkins was forked from Hudson, but Oracle is run by people driven by what they think they can get away with, and not by what is good for the projects that they have power over.

> the executives who care nothing about open source are firmly in control, and some day may try to assert their control in ways that nobody else likes. I have no idea what Oracle may do tomorrow, but Oracle has been in control of Java for a decade, and what it has actually done is 1. significantly increase the investment in the platform and 2. open source the entire JDK. So I don't know about the next ten years, but…

Your opinion is your opinion.

My opinion of the company and its products is more consistently negative than any other large company. And while you think that the non-Java world is suffering, I think you have some tunnel vision.

Let's just say that I am personally happy with my decision to stay away from Java. And the brief periods where I had to work with Java were misery. Languages have personalities as well as companies, and there is a reason that the startup world stays away from Java in droves.

Re: IT Runs on Java 8

#333

Post by munchbunny » Fri, May 10, 2019, 11:31 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #291

vijucat wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great points, but it's actually much simpler than that: if you want static types, you have already eliminated the majority of HN darlings (JS, Python, and Ruby). Where do you? Most developers turn to C++, Java, or C# (not Haskell or F#, for example), and of these, Java and C# are both great for productivity and not daunting for someone just starting out, unlike C++. There was a period after 200x where developers mana…

> Great points, but it's actually much simpler than that: if you want static types, you have already eliminated the majority of HN darlings (JS, Python, and Ruby). Well, if you ignore mypy and consider TypeScript distinct enough from JS to not count, sure, though TS is if anything more of an HN darling than bare JS (Really, none of those languages has been an HN or developer community darling in years, though Python—…

According to Github: https://github.blog/2018-11-15-state-of-the-octoverse-top-pr...

As it happens, among the statically typed languages, C++, Java, and C# are the top three, with C and TypeScript filling out the top 10 lineup.

That's not saying "more than half", but if you include C onto that list, I would definitely bet against your statement.

Re: IT Runs on Java 8

#334

Post by pron » Fri, May 10, 2019, 11:34 PM UTC

btilly wrote: post #332

pron wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the executives who care nothing about open source are firmly in control, and some day may try to assert their control in ways that nobody else likes. I have no idea what Oracle may do tomorrow, but Oracle has been in control of Java for a decade, and what it has actually done is 1. significantly increase the investment in the platform and 2. open source the entire JDK. So I don't know about the next ten years, but…

Your opinion is your opinion. My opinion of the company and its products is more consistently negative than any other large company. And while you think that the non-Java world is suffering, I think you have some tunnel vision. Let's just say that I am personally happy with my decision to stay away from Java. And the brief periods where I had to work with Java were misery. Languages have personalities as well as comp…

> and there is a reason that the startup world stays away from Java in droves.

You may have your own case of tunnel vision. I mean, sure, there are "droves" of startups that stay away from Java (many only to turn to it later), but there are also "droves" that adopt it from the get-go.

Re: IT Runs on Java 8

#335

Post by jacques_chester » Fri, May 10, 2019, 11:38 PM UTC

sl1ck731 wrote: post #307

pron wrote: post #85

The funny thing is that from a purely technological point of view, Java (even the 5-year-old Java 8 and certainly recent versions) is far ahead of most other stuff hyped on HN (as well as less hyped stuff). Virtually no other platform comes close to that combination of state-of-the-art optimizing compilers, state-of-the-art GCs, and low-overhead in-production profiling/monitoring/management. And much of the cutting-e…

I was never super into Java development. I started working in 2014 and was introduced to Weblogic, Jenkins, huge Maven POMs and all the rest, then went into Cloud consulting. When I sit down to do anything I get so wrapped up in all the stuff that comes along with Java and feel like I have to use some huge IDE like Eclipse (I hate) or IntelliJ (I If I could just write code and have a simple package manager like NPM o…

> What I really want is to get a "lite" Java project like this up and running with all of the smart people's opinions in place that I can develop entirely in a lite editor (preferably without XML anywhere).

That's pretty much the original value proposition for Spring Boot. "I just want to get to work".

I used Spring Boot before encountering a Spring 3 project. The difference is phenomenal.

Disclosure: I work for Pivotal, which sponsors Spring.

Re: IT Runs on Java 8

#336

Post by ivan_gammel » Fri, May 10, 2019, 11:39 PM UTC

sl1ck731 wrote: post #307

pron wrote: post #85

The funny thing is that from a purely technological point of view, Java (even the 5-year-old Java 8 and certainly recent versions) is far ahead of most other stuff hyped on HN (as well as less hyped stuff). Virtually no other platform comes close to that combination of state-of-the-art optimizing compilers, state-of-the-art GCs, and low-overhead in-production profiling/monitoring/management. And much of the cutting-e…

I was never super into Java development. I started working in 2014 and was introduced to Weblogic, Jenkins, huge Maven POMs and all the rest, then went into Cloud consulting. When I sit down to do anything I get so wrapped up in all the stuff that comes along with Java and feel like I have to use some huge IDE like Eclipse (I hate) or IntelliJ (I If I could just write code and have a simple package manager like NPM o…

It’s the first time I see someone willing to trade Nexus/Maven for NPM. There’s even no standard way to build and package a TypeScript library, to start with. For small projects, maybe, it can work, but for enterprise needs JS/TS is not even close.

Re: IT Runs on Java 8

#337

Post by willbw » Fri, May 10, 2019, 11:40 PM UTC

js2 wrote: post #329

pdpi wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Java-the-language is a fairly crummy thing to work with, it’s Java-the-ecosystem that’s genuinely good — the JVM, the tooling, etc etc. The quality of IDEs available is definitely a very large component of that. Doing Java on a lightweight editor seems like a way to pay the price without reaping the benefits.

I use TextMate (!) to maintain an Android SDK that's a mix of Java, C and C++ avoiding Android Studio like the plague, to maintain an iOS SDK that's mostly Objective-C, similarly avoiding Xcode's editor, and to maintain the backend written in Python that these SDK's talk to. I've got enough going on in my head w/o having to deal with the complexity of two different IDEs. Anyway, for me Java-the-language is fine. The…

I've not done any Android development but how is IntelliJ for it? While it can be slow on big codebases and obviously never as responsive as vim in a terminal, I think the tooling is excellent.

But again, you have to spend a month or so learning the shortcuts.

Re: IT Runs on Java 8

#338

Post by arcticbull » Fri, May 10, 2019, 11:42 PM UTC

pron wrote: post #85

The funny thing is that from a purely technological point of view, Java (even the 5-year-old Java 8 and certainly recent versions) is far ahead of most other stuff hyped on HN (as well as less hyped stuff). Virtually no other platform comes close to that combination of state-of-the-art optimizing compilers, state-of-the-art GCs, and low-overhead in-production profiling/monitoring/management. And much of the cutting-e…

Respectfully I'm not sure that's true.

> State-of-the-art optimizing compilers.

LLVM provides coverage for many of the new languages that are hyped these days (with the notable and truly unfortunate exception of Go). LLDB provides an excellent debugger infrastructure.

> State-of-the-art GCs.

True, there's some good work there but I'm excited about languages that don't need GCs at all, so that we can finally stop tricking the memory wizard into complying with our workloads and focus on determinism, power efficiency and memory efficiency.

> Low-overhead in-production profiling/monitoring/management.

Correct me if I'm wrong but a lot of that is available in dtrace is it not?

This is actually why I'm so excited by LLVM. I think it's the biggest advancement in computer science in ages and ages. It allows compiler engineers to focus on bringing what they do better and differently to the stack. It allows them to leverage the years of work and bundles of PHDs worth of research that went into the rest. All that time Go wasted developing assemblers for platforms should have been spent focusing on Go and letting LLVM handle it.

Over time the delta between what Java has and what LLVM has will shrink which in turn narrows the gap between Java and every other LLVM based language.

Think about it, macOS is basically just various front-ends for LLVM. Apple's implementations of OpenCL and OpenGL, the Metal Shading Language and Core Image are all wrappers for LLVM. Swift is a wrapper for LLVM. Clang makes C and C++ fancy wrappers for LLVM. Rust is a wrapper for LLVM. Almost everything your mac does is a fancy front-end for LLVM. Even Safari was (until B3 backend) a fancy front end for LLVM.

Re: IT Runs on Java 8

#339

Post by isbvhodnvemrwvn » Fri, May 10, 2019, 11:43 PM UTC

cbsmith wrote: post #98

What's funny about this is that Java 8 is no longer supported by Oracle, so unless you are using openjdk or some other equivalent, IT is running on a potentially insecure platform. Not being cutting edge is one thing, but being insecure...

Large companies have support deals with Oracle (or other providers, like Red Hat, IBM or Azul). My client has one for Java 8 until 2026 I think. One of the larger obstacles in upgrading to Java 11 is that the libraries which replace SOAP clients in JDK are not patched (unlike the JDK), and have a ton of known CVEs to them.

Re: IT Runs on Java 8

#340

Post by ivan_gammel » Fri, May 10, 2019, 11:43 PM UTC

bunderbunder wrote: post #326

sl1ck731 wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was never super into Java development. I started working in 2014 and was introduced to Weblogic, Jenkins, huge Maven POMs and all the rest, then went into Cloud consulting. When I sit down to do anything I get so wrapped up in all the stuff that comes along with Java and feel like I have to use some huge IDE like Eclipse (I hate) or IntelliJ (I If I could just write code and have a simple package manager like NPM o…

To a couple of those - Compared to the other options, Gradle (IMO) significantly reduces the package & project management overhead. That said, it's still relatively high insofar as you are still asked to keep track of things like whether a dependency is needed at compile time, run time, or test time. Java-the-language has a symbiotic relationship with heavyweight IDEs. The language's development is as influenced by t…

Maven doesn’t have a lot of overhead, if you don’t overengineer your POM and use shared parent between multiple projects. It requires some DevOps thinking, but in the end typical project POM will be just a list of dependencies and basic metadata.